Introduction to the special issue: Tracing geographies of extinction

According to the IUCN, we are living through a sixth mass-extinction event in the earth’s history – a period of biological annihilation. In the context of the contemporary attention given over to debates concerning the Anthropocene – as bonafide geological epoch, or perhaps a ‘boundary’ through which we must pass before entering into something better (or worse) – theorizing extinction, its processes, drivers and affects, in a manner that rejects the figure of the autonomous species so as to better reckon with the entangled nature-cultures of the present, has become a central objective of environmental scholarship across the humanities. In this special issue, we explore the ways in which engaging with geographic scholarship enhances understandings of, and responses to, species extinction